Exercises

1. Getting Started
2. Social Change
3. Why?
4. So What?
5. What Is to be Done?

The following five exercises introduce you to using the SDA online analysis software. You will begin your social science investigation with concepts such as replication, unit of analysis, level of measurement, analysis over time versus cross-sectional analysis, crosstabulation, correlation, and creating an index. In these exercises, these concepts are all applied to the theory of declining community in America and social capital.

In each exercise, your investigation will involve reading, learning, practicing, and questioning. You will do some reading about community and social capital, learn to use SDA with a tutorial, practice using SDA on your own, and answer questions.

Exercise 1 illustrates searching codebooks and running and interpreting frequencies, bar graphs, and summary statistics. Exercise 2 illustrates producing and interpreting line graphs and recoding variables. Exercise 3 illustrates running and interpreting crosstabulations. Exercise 4 illustrates running and interpreting correlations, using the compute command to create new variables, and exporting data into other statistical programs. Finally, exercise 5 wraps up your investigation and points you toward the future investigation in the area of social capital.